


i've been riding with the ghost

by likewinning



Category: Friday the 13th Series (Movies), My Bloody Valentine (2009)
Genre: M/M, crazy people doing crazy things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-08
Updated: 2009-03-08
Packaged: 2018-04-07 14:33:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4266819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/pseuds/likewinning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The bed creaks and the drinks pile up and Clay shuts his eyes from all of it, everything but Tom and the way Tom moves under him, like even with months apart and years of sanity between them, Tom is attuned to everything in him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've been riding with the ghost

**Author's Note:**

> written 8 million years ago. any errors are mine.

_See I ain't getting better. I am only getting behind. I am standing on a crossroad trying to make up my mind. I'm trying to remember how it got so late, why every night pain comes from a different place. Now something's got to change._

**\- Songs: Ohia, “I’ve Been Riding with the Ghost”**

 

It’s just some bar, somewhere out of the way to stay until Tom can make sure his face is out of the papers. The place is so low-key, it lacks even a television. It’s just somewhere to lay low, his head ducked over a whiskey and his mind somewhere else entirely, reliving the latest killings. He’s nowhere, looking for nothing, and that’s why he’s so convinced that what happens next is – well, fate.

He’s watching the door; of course he is; he’s crazy, but he knows he needs to watch out for cops and people who look like cops. He’s miles away, a few states over and secluded as hell, and legally he’s _dead_ , but – but, it’s best not to take any chances.

He’s watching the door, and that’s why he sees him, the second Clay walks in.

Tom would know that face anywhere.

It’s been eighteen months – or seventeen months, twenty-two days, and maybe keeping track is what finally dragged Tom into the real world -, and Clay looks a little different, like he put on some weight, but Tom still spies that thing in him, that piece so like _all_ of him, that lured him in the first time.

While he cradles his drink, he holds his breath and waits for Clay to see him. He feels himself shake, like he hasn’t since that first night back in the mines, like he didn’t at _all_ when he killed all those people (and, yeah, the memories roar back with frequency and Tom swallows every one with pleasure). He shakes, thinking of what will happen if Clay doesn’t notice him – or if he does.

His weapons are gone, as are the suit and boots, but there’s nothing wrong with his hands.

*

When he left the hospital, Clay tried out a couple of things. He picked up odd jobs, waiting and construction work and some stint at a gas station, but nothing really fit him until he came here, to some small quiet nowhere county and picked up a job at the local newspaper. He thought he needed a city, needed noise and civilization. He thought that somewhere like this – rundown and remote as Crystal Lake, no Target or McDonalds for miles – would be exactly what he never wanted to go _near_ , but this turns out to be exactly what he needs. He needs this fear, to keep him safe.

But things still aren’t normal, in any sense. Clay does his job and sometimes he likes it, but he keeps to himself and every night he comes here, to the bar down the street. It’s quiet enough to hear every ice cube clink in every glass, every bottle crack open, every mouth munching stale bar peanuts. It’s so stupid and familiar and Clay knows _everyone_ here, so it only takes one look around for him to see the unfamiliar (too familiar) face.

He’d never say it, not even to himself, but it’s the _first_ thing he sees, like he just _senses_ it. And when he looks up at Tom, Tom looks up at _him_ , and Tom smiles so wide it hurts them both.

Right then, Clay could walk back out the door, could pretend it’s all a mistake, could avoid some reunion that he imagines could turn out a hundred times more awkward than meeting up with some kid he knew in grade school – but he doesn’t. He knows, fucking stupid as he is, that it won’t be like that.

He knows it’s more, even when it shouldn’t be. And anyway, Tom’s here – not at the hospital. That’s supposed to be a good thing. It means he’s better, too, although Clay really has no fucking idea what that means.

Tom stands up when Clay reaches the table. He stands there not knowing whether to hug Clay, whether to kiss him, whether to fucking kill him on the spot for leaving (what’s one more, when he’s already a dead man himself?), so he just pats Clay on the shoulder, gets a grip on the too-eager grin on his face, and asks, “How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been…” Clay says, and it’s the pause that reels Tom in, the pause that lets him know that nothing is perfect with Clay, that he still needs – something.

(Tom.)

Clay sits down and hooks one of his legs over the other. His jeans, Tom notices, still fit him fucking perfectly. His hair still covers his eyes. “How about you?” he asks Tom. “You’re out, man. You still havin’ bad dreams?”

Tom grins, can’t help it, thinking of the latest “dreams.” “No, man,” he says.

He hasn’t slept in eighteen months – seventeen months, twenty-two days.

“That’s great,” Clay says, and he wishes he meant it. He’s looking at Tom, at the green eyes and pale skin and freckles, at the muscles hiding beneath that snug t-shirt, and Tom’s looking back at him, just like before. Like always. Like Clay’s the greatest fucking thing he ever saw, and he can’t even contain himself.

Clay used to hope it was the drugs.

“So how long you been out, man?” The waitress comes over and Tom declines another drink, but Clay orders two for himself. He has to do something, to loosen the reality of this. To justify the need, even now, new place and a new life, to lean across the table and put his mouth on Tom’s, like it never fucking left.

“’Bout a month this Tuesday,” Tom says. He watches as the waitress sets down the drink, watches Clay tilt his head back and pour the first one down his throat like medicine, but it’s the look in Clay’s eyes, still, that makes him lean in closer, so their hands almost touch across the table. Clay gnaws on his lip, and if it’s different from the first time – no smile behind it, just habit – Tom takes it anyway.

“So everything’s okay, then?” He doesn’t even know why he asks. Nothing’s even fucking okay with _him_.

And Tom smiles, real slow, like that little bit of alcohol just set him at ease like a heavy dose from back at the hospital. His eyes glow; Clay can’t remember if Tom’s eyes used to shine like this. If he really noticed (he’s sure he did, and that he didn’t _want_ to). “It is now,” Tom says.

*

They never exchanged last names, never discussed birthdays (although a year passed in that place, it passed without birthday cards for either of them) or favorite sports teams. Clay doesn’t even know what Tom does for a living – if he ever did anything.

There was an unreality, back there, that Clay latched onto. What they did counted for something, for more than just blowjobs and stained sheets and the moonlight shining on Tom’s pale skin, but hidden away like that, Clay didn’t have to think about it.

The first night, Clay has the sense to ask Tom where he’s staying, to find safety in a hotel room (and a mini bar) before he comes with his teeth digging into Tom’s shoulder, with his hand pulling Tom toward the edge as Clay buries himself inside him. The first night it’s just like it was before (except Clay can’t shake the feeling that it’s also just like make-up sex), even with the softer sheets (whatever Tom does, it pays) and the drink on the nightstand, and Tom’s face buried in the pillow this time to keep quiet. Back then, it was about staying out of trouble. Back then, he _wished_ Tom would just take his hand out of his mouth and really _yell_ , for once. Now all he wants is for Tom to stop fucking looking at him like that.

The second time, it’s not that easy. Tom figures it out, that Clay’s not just visiting, that he has some kind of _life_ here as real (or as unreal) as ever, and so while he keeps the hotel, they go back to Clay’s apartment. They keep the light on, shut the blinds (Clay can see everything, the light in Tom’s eyes and the way he smiles, but shut up like this Clay can pretend it doesn’t mean anything), and Tom gets on his knees. He undoes Clay’s jeans and plays with him, slow slow slow strokes like there are a million years between now and tomorrow morning when Clay has to wake up and act like a normal person. Tom goes down on him for what seems like hours, taking him into that mouth, licking up and down his shaft, pressing hard then soft with his hand, leaning down to lick at Clay’s balls. It’s more like worship than Clay’s ever experienced, and he’s so turned on by the end, by the time Tom hums around his dick and rubs a finger over his hole that Clay just lets _go_ , just shouts so loud it hurts his throat, and it’s all he can do to keep from shoving himself as far inside Tom as possible. He could hide there, from whatever this means.

Tom smiles as he wipes the cum off his mouth with the back his hand, a movement that at once makes him look boyish and like he’s some animal after a kill.

Clay wonders how Tom ever got out. He never _asks_ Tom anything, not about income or exes, not even how he got _in_ , and Tom gets it. Even with his head between Clay’s thighs, even as Clay juts into his mouth almost-too-hard, even as his own dick gets so stiff that he’s surprised he can still see the beautiful body in front of him – still, he gets it. Clay wants this; Tom _knows_ it, but Clay can’t see it like Tom can. He can’t catch onto that line of _fate_ the way Tom has. Tom figures he just has to put more effort into making Clay see.

It isn’t the same thing, even with Clay writhing on the sheets, panting his name like their nights in the psych ward never allowed. It isn’t the same thing, even as Clay pulls him up and kisses him, reaching out and feeling the muscle on Tom’s chest and then down down down around his cock, big hand bringing Tom off in goddamn _seconds_.

It isn’t the same, by any means, in this quiet apartment with its leaking faucet and dirty dishes and not one room without a liquor bottle in sight.

But Clay kisses him, and Tom knows somewhere, the way he knows last time wasn’t the _last_ time he’ll kill, the way he knows that red and blue make goddamn _purple_ , that it will be, soon.

*

During the day, Tom doesn’t exist. He’s more than a dead man, because he isn’t really here at all, not by himself. He doesn’t sleep; the closest was that post-slaughter night when he curled up in some abandoned barn and lay there like the dead thing he was. There are no nightmares – even with Clay here again – and so there is nothing to comfort himself with, when Clay’s gone. No guarantee that Clay will come back.

Tom just isn’t _there_.

He watches bad TV, and he flips through newspapers (not looking for himself, not really) and he calls Clay at work and jerks off to the sound of his voice. He’s quiet, and Clay doesn’t know, and anyway it’s not much of a conversation – just Clay half there, and the sound of his fingers on the keyboard (and not on Tom) in the background.

They see each other every night, but some days Tom can’t even wait that long. He shows up at Clay’s work, lips curved in a smile and looking entirely calm like he hasn’t spent all morning twisting and turning in his hotel room. He shows up, and Clay gives him a look of (but never, ever says) _you shouldn’t be here_ , right before he drags Tom into the break room, locks the door, and gets Tom’s jeans down and his mouth on Tom. He fucks Tom with his tongue and like before, Tom has to put a hand over his mouth to keep the noise down. He fucks Tom with his tongue and when it’s over, when he stands up and Tom reaches for Clay’s jeans, Clay shakes his head and goes back to work, hard beyond the telling of it but satisfied with the fact that out there, someone else is waiting for him, that someone else _needs_ him. Even if it’s Tom. (Especially if it’s Tom.)

Every night after work, Clay walks over to the bar and finds Tom there, waiting for him. Sometimes they grab food, and sometimes Clay drinks Tom under the table (and Tom latches on more than ever, cheeks turning whiskey-pink and his knee nudging Clay’s and his mouth against Clay’s ear), but mostly he shows up at the bar and Tom sees him and stands up and there aren’t any words. There aren’t even gestures. They just walk out and head home, like Tom wouldn’t know the way without Clay to guide him. They go back home, and every time Tom starts to ask _how was_ , every time Tom starts to say _I missed_ , Clay kisses him. The bed creaks and the drinks pile up and Clay shuts his eyes from all of it, everything but Tom and the way Tom moves under him, like even with months apart and years of sanity between them, Tom is attuned to everything in him.

Tom knows Clay like a second skin, and he would worry sometimes if _Clay_ really existed, if he weren’t so fucking sure that nothing ever felt this real.

Clay remembers how it was, in the days before he left. He remembers kissing Tom softly and running his fingers over Tom’s skin, mapping freckles even as he tried to forget them. He remembers how every time he pressed his mouth to Tom’s skin, Tom would dig his nails into Clay’s sides, would tug at Clay’s hair, would push back back back against him. He remembers the silence, the wordless need in it all, how Clay would do all he could to keep Tom quiet. Tom still writhes under him, still looks at him like he’s nothing short of _perfect_ , but even as the sweat breaks out on their skin and Tom’s eyes roll back in his head, he stays quiet but for short gasps. Now it’s all Clay can do, not to shout, but Tom is just a whisper against his skin.

It isn’t the same, needing Tom and needing someone – anyone – else, but Tom is all there is. There are no nightmares – the weeks pass and sometimes Tom rests here, pressed against him with his eyes open, putting his hand to Clay’s chest and counting heartbeats -, nothing for him to pretend to save Tom from. He knows Tom is fucked up, only has to look at him once to know that Tom is fucked up _for him_ , but Clay still goes to the bar every night. He can drink, and he can lie, and he can cover them in the bright, artificial light of his room – but Tom’s still here, at once proof of Clay’s relative sanity and some assurance that Clay will never, really, be okay. Especially with (even with) Tom.

*

When Clay finds out, it’s by accident. Even after months, they’ve never exchanged last names (Clay never looks, when Tom holds out his ID at the bar, and whoever Tom is it hasn’t involved mail or phone calls or a _job_ ), so it isn’t until Clay flips through the file dropped on his desk that he comes across the pictures. There, mixed in with some article from some mining town in the middle of fucking nowhere, USA, mixed in with some report on a bunch of slaughters, on a fucking _legacy_ of killing – there, right in the middle, is Tom’s face.

His hands don’t shake, and he keeps down his lunch, but it takes Clay entire minutes to read far enough into the article to find out that Tom’s supposed to be dead. That he’s been fucking a ghost for months now, and he knew, always _knew_ , despite some clean fucking bill of health (Clay assumed up until now) and Tom curled up beside him –

The phone rings next to him, then, and Clay swallows the shake in his voice, puts the file back on his desk, and answers the phone. There’s no caller ID in this archaic office and Clay speaks first, but he knows it’s Tom on the other end. Tom doesn’t breathe any more heavily than anyone Clay’s ever met, doesn’t have any weird phone habits that Clay can pick up on, but he _knows_. (It’s not like anyone else ever calls.) He knows, and it’s that fact, maybe, that allows him to sit there on the phone with Tom, to babble pointlessly to him about the new mail clerk and the assignment he just finished, all while he reads about everything Tom did from the time Clay left him until the time they found each other again.

He leaves work early (stuffing the files in his glove compartment) and finds Tom at his hotel. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but then Tom opens the door and he’s looking at Clay like he’s something else, something _other_ than anything else in the entire goddamn world, looking at Clay like he _always_ does. So instead of doing what he should – instead of running in the other direction, finding a bus or a plane and just _running_ like he has from everything else – he puts his hands on Tom’s shoulders and pushes him back into the room. He presses Tom against the wall and when he looks down at Tom, Tom is breathing hard, his mouth open and his eyes wide, and any other time Clay would kiss him just to get him to shut the fuck _up_ (even though Tom never really _says_ anything that bothers Clay, and maybe that’s the problem), but he doesn’t.

He still kisses Tom, still puts his lips _there_ , just softly, just brushing mouth against mouth and then slowly exploring with his tongue. They haven’t kissed like this since Tom’s been back (since Clay’s been back), since, maybe, that first night in psych ward with the moon shining through the window and the nightmares creeping up Tom’s spine. Tom feels it, too, even if he doesn’t know exactly what it means – because whatever’s going on with Clay right now, Tom’s felt it for months (has always _felt_ it), and it only adds to what he already knows.

What he knows is, Clay’s the only thing that reminds Tom that despite what all the news articles say, he’s alive.

They move to the bed, half-blindly, and Clay lies back and pulls Tom on top of him. Tom hesitates – it’s never like this; they both grab and bite and kiss and fuck but it’s always _Clay_ driving it, and Tom letting whatever happen _because_ it’s Clay. But it only takes one look in Clay’s eyes, the haunted look that no time away from Crystal Lake (or Tom) can entirely kill, for Tom to get his legs on either side of Clay, to lean down and kiss him again. There’s no liquor on Clay’s breath, and it’s sunlight pouring through the blinds, not the moon, and when Tom comes inside of Clay it’s both of them, this time, shouting and shaking and feeling every second of it.

Afterward, for the first time in a year, Tom falls asleep.

*

The moon is bright and full by the time Tom wakes up, but Clay is still there beside him, tracing patterns up and down Tom’s back. It’s nothing conscious on Clay’s part, but it’s what he does as he tries to think of the right words. Tom sits up, and he stares outside for a bit, remembering other nights of just him and the sky, remembering it as his only light source as he dug up Harry’s body. He isn’t interested in the moon, anymore, but he thinks if he looks behind him Clay might not be there.

He scratches the scar on his leg, the one Clay touched but never asked about, and then just as Tom starts to slip back inside himself (he knows Clay is here, feels him as obvious as the weather outside or the sheet underneath him – he just doesn’t _believe_ ), Clay says, “Listen, man. Why don’t you just move in with me?”

Tom knows he’s crazy, but he’s pretty sure he’s never heard voices. Harry was a pretty quiet guy.

He turns around and Clay’s still there, sitting up and running a hand through his messy brown hair. His eyes still aren’t right – Tom doesn’t think they will be, for a while – but his expression is genuine and even after all this time, it makes Tom’s heart race. It’s infinitely better than tearing people apart – and even here, Tom thinks about that.

Tom can’t make his mouth move properly, not past the crooked smile forming there, so Clay keeps going. “I mean, we’re – we see each other every day.” Clay clears his throat and lowers his eyes, wondering how it got this way. “It can’t be cheap to keep this place, even in this bumfuck town.”

Tom shrugs, but he hopes that’s enough to indicate _yes_ , the answer is _yes_ , he _will_ , let’s get out of –

Clay leans forward, and he touches Tom’s arm. He looks closer, taking in Tom’s freckles and stubble and the sharp line of his jaw, taking in (and for once, not flinching at) the way Tom just _looks_ at him. For Tom, Clay knows, there’s never any hesitation.

He thinks of how it happened. He thinks of the small quiet place where he’s chosen to live, where he’s the only one on the block who locks his door (where unsolvable murders happen) and he thinks it makes sense, in a way. Of course he would take this town, and Tom, over safety, over a nice girl from the city or even a good-looking guy with a college degree or a clean bill of health. He needs Tom, and Tom’s history, the way that he needs the fear that he gets any time he loses cell phone reception, the fear he gets whenever he gets too far away from the rest of the world. After Crystal Lake, he didn’t think he would ever be able to feel anything again – but now there’s Tom.

The thing is – he thinks, while he and Tom get dressed and Tom packs his few belongings (and nothing is bloodstained, or torn, or even _sharp_ ) – this is probably the most normal relationship he’s ever had. It’s definitely the most long-term.

This, then – Clay thinks, when he gets Tom back home and they barely make it through the door before they’re on each other again, Clay letting his keys clatter to the floor and Tom dropping his bag – this is the closest to sanity he’s going to get. He laughs into Tom’s mouth, during the fifth or sixth kiss when they’re down to boxers, and Tom doesn’t question it. Clay thinks that’s kind of the point.

*

Here in Clay’s apartment (their apartment), what keeps Tom up is no longer miners, no longer Harry or himself (same/difference), but the thought of Clay leaving, again. His thoughts run bloody as ever, though, because when he thinks of Clay leaving, he thinks of what he would do if Clay tried. He didn’t need to hurt Clay, not the way he hurt the rest of them, because Clay came back. There was no _need_ for vengeance with Clay buried inside him and his name falling heavily from Clay’s lips.

There’s no need, safe and warm inside Clay’s apartment, and some nights Tom even falls asleep. He doesn’t dream anything, because what he wants is right there next to him. What he fears happens every morning when Clay goes to work. Each day, Clay wakes at the sound of his first alarm, stumbles out of bed, and makes coffee. He eats breakfast, and he turns on the news – he wants to know, first, if they’re looking for Tom – and then he spends twenty minutes getting ready. Before he leaves, he steps back into the bedroom. Some mornings, Tom is actually asleep, expression slack but beautiful as ever, but most days Tom is just there, twisting the sheets in his hands. Clay leans down, every morning, and puts his hand to Tom’s cheek, and when they kiss it’s as shocking as cold water, as desperate as the end of the world. There’s nothing sweet about it, even with the sound of birds chirping and Tom murmuring sleepily into Clay’s mouth. Each time it’s goodbye; each time it’s _just in case_. When he leaves, he locks the door, and he tries to pretend he isn’t locking Tom in.

At work, Clay does his research, and soon he knows where Tom grew up, who he dated in high school – he knows that Tom was some rich kid, and that’s probably the only way he still, somehow, has money. He convinces the hospital to fax him Tom’s records (since Tom’s a dead man), and he pours over those, too, but there’s nothing there – nothing to indicate that the man in his bed, back home, was going to become some kind of axe murderer.

He goes home for lunch every day, now, what with Tom’s picture in black and white on his desk, some doctor’s scribble about Tom being ready to get back in the world – details about what prescriptions Tom took, even as it all went down. He goes home, bearing sandwiches and sodas and bags of chips, and they sit at the counter and Clay pretends not to think of all the people Tom killed. Or, he pretends those people are on his mind, when really all he’s doing is waiting for the moment he can push Tom back against the wall and kiss him again. There’s no need to keep Tom quiet, but it helps, anyway.

Lunchtime marks the halfway point for both of them, but for Tom, it means more. It means for that one hour while the sun’s still up, he’s a person again. Clay is there to make sure of that.

*

Every day, Clay goes into work at the newspaper, and the files and folders of research pile up, but the most he has to show for any of it is an untitled Word document. Receipts crowd his wallet, ones from every place he and Tom have gone since Tom moved in, every restaurant and sporting event and movie, but he hasn’t typed a single goddamn sentence about Tom Hanniger, serial killer.

Meanwhile, he and Tom go out every night. Clay buys a car with the money he saved over the last two years, and every night after work Clay comes home and asks, “You ready?” and Tom is, of course. He’s been home all day, counting bumps on the ceiling and keeping the ghost of Harry Warden (the ghost of himself) at bay, but he’s always ready, always clean and dressed and it’s all Clay can do not to rip everything back off him.

Tom can’t guess what it means, that Clay brings him everywhere now. People make him nervous, always have, but anywhere they go, Clay latches onto him. He pushes him to the front of any situation, introducing him to everyone. Tom somehow still remembers how to talk – he thinks it’s Clay that does it, rubbing circles into Tom’s spine and keeping him _here_ , even when he isn’t.

Clay watches the reactions of everyone they meet, waiting for the recognition. He listens for the police sirens. He waits, and nothing happens, and he takes Tom back home and they fuck and they fall asleep watching muted television. All Clay sees are weather reports. His laptop stays closed on the coffee table.

*

The days start to seem longer, and every morning when Clay leaves, the thoughts hit Tom right away. The lock clicks shut and Clay pulls out of the driveway and Tom counts, forward and backward, the seconds minutes hours until Clay comes home. His hands shake and his throat burns and he buries his face in Clay’s pillow, trying to inhale everything that isn’t there. Some days he falls asleep like this, and wakes up to the door doing its act in reverse, to Clay putting a hand on the back of his neck, to Clay crawling into bed with him and placing a kiss on Tom’s bare shoulder.

Mostly, though, he stays up, counting and pacing and keeping himself busy – there isn’t much to do; there are fewer and fewer bottles of alcohol to clean up – until Clay comes back for lunch.

He doesn’t, one day.

He doesn’t, and he doesn’t call, and Tom’s head aches with every violent scenario that runs through his mind, everything that he could do (will do) if it means what he thinks he does. But he breathes deeply, and he counts heartbeats, and he leaves the house (it hadn’t occurred to either of them, to get a key for him) and walks the six blocks to Clay’s work. The receptionist smiles at him; she remembers Tom from the early days, and a few people from the bar nod hello.

Clay isn’t at his desk, but Tom doesn’t want to draw any more attention to himself, so he doesn’t ask questions. People leave their desks all the time. He sits down on the swivel chair and watches the computer clock from 12:51 to 12:54, and there’s really no curiosity involved when he starts sifting through the folders on Clay’s desk. He’s just sick of numbers; he just needs something to do with his hands.

He’s so used to being a ghost that he almost doesn’t recognize himself.

None of it means anything, though. Once, he clung to Clay’s stories of Jason as though they were bedtime stories, passages from some bible that only he (and maybe, _maybe_ Clay) understood, but now, even as his blood quickens, no stories about him compare to _this_ – to what he has back home, with Clay. He thinks it makes sense, though, that Clay would find out like this – that Clay is the only one who makes him real, but even here there’s an element of fiction.

His own face stares back at him, looking like ten years and ten minutes ago all at once, but he has himself and his life story packed up by the time Clay finally returns. Clay looks down at him, and Tom sees the breath catch in Clay’s throat, can feel the quickening of his heartbeat as though he has his fingers pressed to Clay’s wrist. And Clay’s eyes flicker to the file for the briefest second, and he bites his lip, but then Tom stands up and says, “Come on. Time for lunch.” And it hardly matters, if they don’t make it home, if after they go to the top floor of the building where only ink and paper supplies reside, Tom kisses Clay and Clay loosens his belt just enough to let Tom’s hand inside. It doesn’t matter that, afterward, Clay goes back downstairs and Tom walks back _home_ , keeping his head down the whole time. It doesn’t matter, because Clay’s not really going anywhere.

*

When Tom leaves, Clay still has half a day left, half a day to pretend to type some non-existent report. He used to like this job; writing, before Tom, used to come the closest to making him feel anything real. He used to pour everything into dinky, unreadable human-interest pieces. Now he sees Tom’s body count in his sleep – but at work, he plays solitaire.

He manages to go on like this for a while, for more than a week after Tom visits. It should be harder to pretend, now that every wall between them has been knocked down – there are no words, just the look in Tom’s eyes that Clay values more than anything, because no matter what those eyes hold, it isn’t remorse – but most days Clay doesn’t even pretend to do work. Tom doesn’t visit, anymore, although Clay gives him a key to the apartment, but they talk every day on the phone. Some days, Clay even calls first.

It takes two weeks after Tom’s last visit, for Clay’s boss to say anything. She comes over, heels clacking on the tile and an unlit cigarette already in her mouth for when she can go outside, and she asks how much longer the report will take. Clay scratches at his stubble and shows her the folder – withholding the picture, like that will buy either of them some time -, talking nonsense until he finally admits that he hasn’t written a single word.

“This is good material,” his boss insists, tapping one stubby nail on the part where Tom almost killed his ex-girlfriend. Clay shrugs and wonders what Tom’s been up to since the last time Clay called, and his boss asks, “So, what’s the problem?”

In Clay’s hand, he clutches the picture, folded in fourths and in black and white and taken nearly a decade ago but still exactly the man waiting for Clay at home. Same eyes, same mouth – same fucked up mind that Clay’s used to, couldn’t (wouldn’t) change for a second. He says, “I just don’t think it’s really relevant to the paper.”

“You don’t.” He hears the disappointment, the disbelief, but he ignores all of it. His phone begins to ring.

“No,” Clay says on the third ring. His hand shakes as it reaches for the phone, but he waits.

“I can put someone else on the assignment,” his boss says. “Plenty of people here, Clay – they’d kill for an assignment like this. We don’t get much, in towns like this.” Clay isn’t listening. Tom’s voice is in his ear, clear and throaty and as perfect as it was the last time they spoke, two hours ago.

*

Another week passes, and every night Clay comes home sooner, and they stay awake together longer. Once, he might have blamed stress from the job, or just bad dreams – he has them, sometimes, and maybe it should scare him that he _doesn’t_ have them about Tom -, but he knows it’s none of that. He knows forward and backward the name of everyone Tom killed, knows time of death and _exact_ method, but Tom kisses him more softly than Clay ever knew he wanted.

Tom stays inside the apartment, now, at some kind of silent insistence from Clay – he may be a dead man, but there are still ways to dig him back up. But it doesn’t matter as much; it doesn’t feel like a cage, or even a safehouse, because Clay comes home and they stay there. There’s no blood between Tom’s fingernails, no sharp object in his hand, but there’s Clay – and that’s more than Tom ever thought to ask for.

They don’t talk about it, the report Clay’s supposed to hand in that will expose Tom, that will make him less than (more than) a ghost. It’s there, in every gesture; it’s there, that Tom is worse than he seems. It’s there, that none of it ever really mattered. Clay has a chance to actually _be_ somebody; he could write this report and win countless fucking prizes – but he’s too busy counting the freckles on Tom’s skin for the hundred thousandth time to give a shit about any of that.

Still, Tom waits. He holds his breath. This is fate, what they have – here in this place, like before, somewhere they both ended up, somehow -, but some small part of Tom remembers that everyone else left. So he waits, and he tries not to hang on too tightly to whatever Clay gives him – afraid he’ll squeeze the life right out of it -, but it doesn’t take long. He waits, and Clay comes home one rainy day in April, and Tom stands in the kitchen and watches as Clay shakes the water from his hair. Clay’s shoes squeak as he crosses the floor toward Tom, but he doesn’t close the distance between them.

Tom holds his breath, thinking of what he’ll do if –

“So,” Clay says. He puts one hand on the counter behind Tom; if Tom shifted half an inch Clay would touch him. Clay licks the drops of water from his lips. Rain soaked his skin just from the time it took to get here from the parking lot, and he shivers. But Tom watches every word, waiting to catch them before they hit the ground, so Clay stops stalling as says, “I quit my job today.”

“Yeah?” Tom can barely hear himself, over the sound of water falling from Clay’s clothes, over the rush of blood in his head and the sound of his own heartbeat, but he shifts so that Clay’s hand brushes his arm. Clay tilts his head, and his mouth feels wet and soft on Tom’s, and Tom remembers to breathe again, just like that.

Clay kisses Tom, that’s all. The thought already ran through his head on the ride home, that as soon as someone else picks up his assignment, there will be no more hiding – if that’s really what they were doing. Either way, Tom will be everywhere, entirely alive again. He had this conversation with himself already, as the windshield wipers squeaked and brushed away the rain; even before that, as he stood in the parking lot and tore every piece of research in halves and fourths and dropped them into the nearest trash bin. He’s already seen himself, seen his eyes face everything and all that he is now (always was) and so when he pulls back, he asks nothing more than, “You ready to go?”

Tom says nothing, just squeezes Clay’s wrists in response, and within an hour they’re back in the car, two bags in the backseat behind them and some song on the radio. Tom falls asleep to the steady sound of the rain on the roof, to Clay there beside him. They head south, and Tom dozes dreamlessly. Clay isn’t going anywhere else.


End file.
